So she went forward and laid her cheek carefully against her mother’s powder and paint, and then pointed out her trunks and got a porter to carry them out to the car, which was waiting, her mother assured her, outside.
‘Father couldn’t come, he’s at the office, of course, but I thought I’d better meet you myself in case Robson didn’t recognise you. It’s been a long time,’ Mrs Cordwainer said coolly and Sara said sharply, ‘I’m surprised you recognised me yourself, Mother, for I’m sure you saw very little more of me than Robson did, one way and another.’
For a moment she wondered if she had gone too far, but she need not have worried. Her mother was looking thoughtfully at Sara’s outfit, and nodding approvingly. She had probably not even heard Sara’s words.
‘That is a very pretty hat,’ Mrs Cordwainer said. ‘Pearls would look well in the neck of that coat – do you have some pearls?’
‘Not so far as I know,’ Sara said. ‘And I don’t know that I want any, thank you. I think that pearls would look dull against the white of the lapels.’
This time her mother really did look surprised, then she shrugged and took Sara’s arm.
‘You’re quite the fashionable young lady,’ she said lightly. ‘I shall enjoy having you at home now you’re grown up. Come along, I want to see what other clothes you’re hiding in your trunks. And in a few days we must talk about having a coming-out party for you. You are eighteen, after all.’
Sara said nothing, but she smiled to herself as she followed her mother’s elegant back out of the station. If she really thinks that I’m going to turn into a paper pattern of herself she’s got another think coming, Sara told herself grimly. Wait till she hears I want a job! Wait till I say I’m off to see Nanny for a weekend – and just let them try to stop me now!
Brogan and Peader had a marvellous welcome when they reached the house in Swift’s Alley. Mammy wept and hugged them, the boys cheered and shouted and asked if there were presents in the bags, and Polly beamed and jumped up and down until her curls danced and kept gabbling away in her sweet, breathless voice until Mammy laughed and told her to stop or she’d be sent off to bed so she would!
‘But there’s roast ribs and a huge pan of new spuds and butter for our tea – I got the butter from the dairy on Francis Street, Mammy sent me there wit’ me friend Tad from the next block,’ Polly informed Brogan. She could not remember him too clearly – she had been two when he’d last been home – but Peader had been back more recently and she almost throttled him with hugs.
‘Colleen, colleen, don’t strangle me dead before I’ve so much as walked in the door,’ he begged, and then his wife cast herself on his chest and he hugged her close whilst tears ran down his cheeks and dripped on to her black curls. ‘Ah, Deirdre, Deirdre, me darlin’ girl, never has a feller missed a woman more, I’ve been heartsick for you every day these free years.’
Brogan turned away, catching hold of Polly’s small hand. They deserved a moment to themselves, those two, who had worked so hard and longed for each other so much and who were reunited at last.
‘Come on, Polly, you show me the new rooms, and then you can take me a walk around the city,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Donal, Bevin, you come too . . . now where’s that fine boy I’ve heard so much about – me baby brother, Ivan?’
‘He’s there, the bad spalpeen,’ Polly grumbled, hooking the baby out of the corner where he was beating a pile of building blocks with a small wooden hammer. ‘Aw, come on, you tarble boy, Brogan’s goin’ to take us a walk.’
‘Where would you like to go?’ Brogan said when they had descended the stairs and were crossing the courtyard. ‘Go on, you choose.’
There was a babble of suggestions. Donal pulled at his sleeve, Polly clung to his hand, Bevin, who was twelve now, nudging thirteen, ran ahead, shouting the news to the neighbourhood that ‘Me brother’s come home so he has!’
This was home, Brogan thought contentedly, suggesting that they should do one thing at a time now, and not to forget he was home for a whole two weeks. Home was kids bawling at you, the pram which Polly and he were pushing between them bouncing over the cobbles, the sky soft and blue overhead.
‘I don’t care where we go, then,’ Polly said, capitulating as suddenly as she had begun the argument. ‘Go on, Donal, you choose.’
‘Sure an’ anywhere’ll be fun,’ Donal said, promptly following suit. ‘We could go to the Basin, Brog. That’s what Bevin ’ud like.’
‘Then the Basin it is,’ Brogan said. ‘I’ll just pop into John’s Lane on me way past, though. Light a candle that I’m home safe.’
‘Mammy’ll do that an’ all,’ Polly observed, whilst Donal, who was fourteen and a practical person, remarked that most of the men he knew would have wanted to pop into Deegan’s pub on their way past rather than the church.
‘I’ll do that later,’ Brogan said, not wanting to appear a cissy in his brother’s eyes. ‘Come on, ’tis a long walk to the Basin from Swift’s Alley!
Chapter Six
Brogan and his father had returned home on a Saturday. In true Irish fashion there was a downpour of rain on the Sunday, wetting the faithful, Mammy said gloomily, as they made their way both to and from Mass. Monday, too, dawned overcast – not that the O’Bradys cared! You could sell newspapers in any weather bar rain, the boys always said, and it was the same with fish, which never sold well on a Monday anyway. Folk wanted fish for Wednesdays and Fridays, that was obvious, so unless they fancied it specially, they would not buy the rest of the week.
So when Tuesday proved to be a brilliant day, the family decided that everyone would take the day off. The boys deputed others, cousins, friends, to do their jobs and everyone put on their oldest, most practical clothing, for today they were going to Booterstown on the train, to pick cockles on the long, sandy strand.
It was the height of a child’s ambition, Brogan thought, as he watched his mammy cutting a carryout for each of them. His mother’s famous soda bread, a lump of real butter which Polly had run down and bought from the shop on Francis Street earlier, wrapped in cabbage leaves to keep it cool, and a screw of salt in a piece of blue paper. They would pick enough cockles for to make a meal, and lastly Mammy had got a big, scarlet tomato each from one of the market stalls. Riches! And Peader carried a covered bucket with tea in it – they would make a fire of sticks to heat it up, if they could find enough dry ones, that was. If not they’d drink it cold. ‘And why not? Sure and I have me bottle of cold tay every day of me workin’ life,’ Peader reminded them.
They walked to the Tara Street station in a noisy, laughing crowd, Mammy and Daddy arm in arm, Mammy holding Ivan on her hip. Only he was a heavy, wriggling burden and since they couldn’t get the pram on the train Brogan took charge of him, letting him walk a wee way, then picking him up and running with him to catch up with the others.
‘I’m your horsie, amn’t I, big feller?’ Brogan said when Ivan screamed to get down again. ‘Give your horsie a cut – a little one, mind – and he’ll gallop right round the corner wit’ you.’
Ivan liked that. He liked sitting on Brogan’s shoulders, too, and hanging on to Brogan’s ears and yelling to every passerby to ‘Look at me! I’m onna norsie, so I am!’
The family piled into a carriage as soon as the train drew in, only Mammy and Peader managing to get a seat. But no one minded. Brogan piled their carryouts and their jackets on the long string hammock of a rack which hung above the seated passengers’ heads whilst his father sat himself carefully down next to his wife, the bucket of tea stood on the floor between his boots.
The train started with a jerk and Peader steadied the bucket whilst Donal hung out of the window despite many warnings from Mammy that it was dangerous and he’d get a blast from the engine in his eye and then he’d be sorry. He was still shouting against the wind that he wasn’t the sort of donkey to go gettin’ things in his eyes when he squawked and withdrew his head, one hand to his face.
‘Oh, ’tis the size of a housebrick, I’ll die for sure,’ Donal roared, and Niall told him he was a donkey indeed whilst Mammy scolded and Daddy said he’d done the same himself, many a time, and advice came both from family and other passengers. Pull your eyelid down over your eye now, feller. Blow your nose real hard, that’ll do it. Screw up your eyes to make the water come, then blow your nose. But Bevin, probably imagining a trip to the hospital instead of a day at the seaside, turned and gave his brother a hearty clout. The blow made Donal shout again but his eye watered so much that the blast ran out with the tears and he was cured, though he glared at his brother resentfully.
When the fuss was over Brogan hung on to the luggage rack and gazed at the gardens and houses rushing past the window and Polly and Bevin hung on to him. Polly kept talking, though he could not hear much above the racket of the train. She kept pointing to the pictures which hung below the luggage rack and eventually Brogan realised she was asking which of them was Booterstown.
He examined the brown photographs, then leaned forward and ran his finger along the titles beneath each.
‘None of ’em’s where we’s going,’ he told Polly. ‘Well, not today. Booterstown’s a good place, you’ll like it right well. But we’ll go to those other places one day, alanna . . . we’ll go to Killarney, and the beautiful Wicklow Mountains, and to Ballybunion. When you’re a bit older.’
Polly just nodded. She did not even look surprised at such optimism and Brogan realised that to Polly all things were still possible. She had been in Dublin most of her short life and this would be her first visit to Booterstown, but she didn’t waste time wondering why they’d not been before or when they’d go again, she just enjoyed the present . . . or would, once they got there.
Presently, Polly stood on tiptoe and shouted something else at him.
‘What was that?’ Brogan bawled, but at that moment the train slowed and stopped and there was a stampede for the platform. Brogan picked the baby off his mammy’s lap and slung him round his neck, the child’s fat little legs on either side of his face. Then he jumped down, turned and lifted the little ones down, finally offering his hand first to his mammy and then to an old lady who thanked him in a very regal manner, though she then wiped her nose on her sleeve, which didn’t look quite so good.
Mammy came down on to the platform like a queen, with only the lightest touch of her fingers in his . . . she was a wonderful woman, Brogan thought with delight. How many women did he know who’d borne nine children, raised six of them, and taken on another child, yet still managed to smile and laugh more than she sighed, to seem carefree when burdened with a thousand worries – and had skin like new milk still, and hair without one strand of white? Not many, that was for sure. Not any, now he came to think.
‘Mammy, you’re a wonderful woman so you are,’ he said to her, bowing and making Mammy laugh and flick his nose with her finger and the baby scream with pretended fear and cling like a limpet to Brogan’s longsuffering ears. ‘I hope I may meet a woman like you one of these days, else I’ll not marry, I promise you. You leave every other woman I’ve met in the ha’penny place, so you do.’
‘Your mammy’s one in a t’ousand; when the good Lord made her he threw away the mould,’ Peader said, jumping down and then reaching back for the bucket. ‘Praise be to God, we’ll get there wit’ our tea-bucket unspilt at this rate!’
Polly waited patiently until they reached the beach, and then, sitting on the sand beside Brogan and taking off her plimsolls, she asked the question that she’d been trying to get out for ages, only the train clattered so, and the boys kept talking.
‘Brogan, I wish we could have brought me friend Tad wit’ us, so I do. Tad’s never seen the sea, it’s too far to walk to Booterstown and the Donoghues don’t have pennies for the tram or the train.’
Brogan had undone his boots and was pulling off a pair of wonderful thick socks. Polly thought his feet must be stinkin’ hot and said so, but Brogan said the woollen socks kept his feet cool because they sucked up the sweat and stopped his feet from scraping on the boot-leather.
‘And as for your friend Tad, why didn’t you call for him? Mammy and Daddy would have brought him, sure they would,’ he added, wriggling his freed toes which were white as Polly’s own. ‘We wouldn’t have grudged the lad a train ticket.’
‘I didn’t think,’ Polly said sadly. ‘It’s selfish I am, Brogan, for he’s a good friend to me. But he doesn’t live in Swift’s Alley now.’
Brogan raised a brow, then stood up, bent down and pulled her to her feet. ‘Why not? Tell me whilst we paddle.’
They ran over the sand and down to the water, which creamed soft and easy against the shore. They both paused at the edge, then went in solemnly, slowly, and Polly’s feet felt the salt sea water for the first time and she squeaked, and kicked foam, and decided that it was the best thing in the world so it was, and she’d come here again so she would. Kids could earn money, she and Tad would earn money for the train ticket and come here and spend days and days on the beautiful golden beach!
But Brogan wanted to hear about Tad, so she marshalled her thoughts, took his hand, and spoke as they waded deeper.
‘Well, the Donoghues aren’t a very nice family – that is, the mammy and daddy aren’t very nice. Well, that isn’t right either, Brogan, because the mammy’s nice, all right, but she can’t stop the daddy taking all the food and beating the kids up and blacking her eye every Sat’day night, just about. He’s a wicked great man, Mr Donoghue, he beats Tad’s ould wan wit’ his fists an’ the kids wit’ his big ash stick . . . he’s a docker . . . and he drinks all the money away, even the money Mrs Donoghue makes from her work. Well, it’s not so bad when he is working, but when he doesn’t get a job then he goes home and searches for the money . . . she hides it, of course. And when he finds it he takes it though she cries and cries. So that was what happened to the rent money, it was so. He took it, an’ when Mrs Donoghue couldn’t pay sure an’ the landlord turned ’em out. So now they live in Gardiners Lane, and it’s all the fault of Tad’s ould feller.’